García Márquez, macondismo, and the soundscapes of vallenato

Abstract

This article is about the role of García Márquez and particularly macondismo as an ideology in establishing the canonic validity of vallenato as a folk genre from the Colombian Caribbean. García Marquez' chronicles of the early 1950s are seen as foundational texts on the aesthetics and value of vallenato; texts which influence subsequent writings on the topic. One of the main topics explored is how these texts acquire canonic validity through the success of One Hundred Years of Solitude. It is then that macondismo – the Latin Americanist celebration of magical realism – becomes an interpretive metaphor for Colombia and vallenato music becomes the sonorous emblem of this metaphor. This occurs through García Marquez' writings, his multiple interventions in Colombian vallenato festivals, and the way vallenato is subsequently taken by a journalistic elite of the country as representing a macondian sonorous paradigm. The article explores how these different elements coalesce in constructing a genealogy of aurality for vallenato, setting the parameters of its interpretive significance through multiple processes of folklorisation of the genre.